


Redemption

by jalendavi_lady



Series: Myst: Achenar What If [3]
Category: Myst Series
Genre: Achenar Being Achenar, Bahro Quest, Calling Out The Ancient D'ni, D'ni Original Character, D'ni Religion, D'ni-pattern racism, Esher's Little Lab Of Horrors, Familial Protectiveness, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Implied/Referenced Genocide, Implied/Referenced Murder, Implied/Referenced Torture, Myst Spoilers, Prophecy, Siblings, Slavery, Spoilers for Myst IV: Revelation, Spoilers for Myst V: End Of Ages, reinterpretive fun with Watcher's Words
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2020-11-10 16:07:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20854529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jalendavi_lady/pseuds/jalendavi_lady
Summary: Sometimes the Maker's plans do not so much require the actions of the innocent who do not crave power so much as the actions of the not at all innocent who understand they should not hold power.Esher, meet Achenar.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm blocked on the between bits of the series right now and I've had this written from K'veer through the arena since NaNo 2017 so I'm giving in and posting out of order. Particularly because this fic is what made me want to write the series.

"That should be everything." Atrus hesitated as he said it.  
  
"Father, I'll be fine. You knew less and managed. I have notes, a map, more food than I should need, canteens and knowledge of how to find the fresh water that is everywhere down there, and I know about those volcanic vents and have breathing aids for that part of the journey. I'm not a boy Linking alone for the first time." Speaking to Atrus alone had gotten easier over the decades as they had finally adjusted around Achenar's need to think longer before opening his mouth.  
  
It didn't hurt that Achenar had been rehearsing this last conversation in his head for the past month and knew his father well enough he wasn't running into unanticipated objections.  
  
"You don't have to do this."  
  
"I'm not letting anyone throw me a proper D'ni birthday celebration for reaching the Age Of Wisdom without having stood in the cavern at least once, and everyone including you is insisting on holding one." He ran a hand through his hair, fully aware it was turning more and more every year now and that they were proving what he'd told his mother so long ago to be true - even now they were both going unmistakably gray, they were still bickering. But it was kinder-hearted now. "And if I'm going as far as K'veer anyway, I want to see Descent. And someone ought to look for Yeesha."  
  
"I worry. About both of you," Atrus admitted. He smiled fondly. "If anyone had told be a century ago that you were going to be the child I grew old beside..."  
  
Achenar smiled back. "It's all so impossible, knowing us, isn't it? Somewhere the Maker must be laughing at us." He sobered, forcing himself back to reality at the mention of the Maker. "I know it's a risk. I'm not fond of the thought of miles of rock hanging over my head, and that is an extreme understatement. But I do want to see K'veer - after what we did to you, I _need_ to see K'veer - and if I am allowed I would like to see my sister once more in this life."  
  
The grim truth that he still didn't know if he had any hope of avoiding Jakooth's Age at the judgment hung silently in the air.  
  
"She's got the best chance she could of making it, we made sure of that," he added. "And me catching her when she was trying to go ahead and run off to D'ni overland when she was sixteen didn't hurt her chances of survival. She was a mature D'ni adult when she left, who knows what she's found by now."  
  
"So that's it, then. You'll be Linking in the morning after breakfast."  
  
He hadn't expected Atrus to be this accepting of the situation this fast.  
  
"That's the plan."  
  
"One last thing: does Vahtah know you're going?"  
  
Achenar tried to hold in a scowl. "She knows I was thinking about it. We're friends, not anything else."  
  
Atrus gave him a look.  
  
"She knows I want us to only be friends, Father. And it's nothing like the time I told only her I was going to apologize to the northern mangree tribe."  
  
"Yes, because now we're the ones who have to tell her what you've gone and done if you disappear instead of the other way round. Only this time you might be more than concussed and we'll have a horrible time getting to you even if we figure out you need aid."  
  
"She's going to be a priestess of Yahvo once she reaches the Age Of Wisdom. She deserves better than my uncertain future. As I keep telling her. And the religious implications could wreck everything she's worked for."  
  
It wasn't just Vahtah he was rejecting a relationship with, it was anyone else. D'ni marriage meant accepting a level of spiritual responsibility for the other person, and with his history and status he couldn't ask anyone to enter that with him. Achenar had accepted that easily enough when he'd been forced into rejoining human society full time; after all, it was nearly no punishment compared to what he deserved or what he'd already endured completely alone during his first years on Haven.  
  
But the thought of a priestess of Yahvo, with all the hints of being a born prophetess as sometimes happened, willingly letting a man likely doomed to Jakooth's Age have moral responsibility over her... it was so wrong as to be laughable.  
  
"I don't care that you two have decided you are friends and nothing else! She's still the best friend you have outside the family and deserves better than this."

* * *

Achenar didn't tell Vahtah he was going.  
  
He slipped into the temple to pray, travelling bag at his feet, and let her draw her own conclusions like the fully capable adult she was who knew him far too well.  
  
She was after all the first full-bloodied D'ni woman he had ever met, back when he didn't even know how to greet his own kin correctly in the language of their people. When he was still stuck inside the first time he left Haven, recovering from the poison he'd breathed to save Yeesha from Sirrus.  
  
"You're going to go find her, aren't you?" she whispered lightly enough it didn't disturb the peace of the room. "She's been gone too long. We all know it, no one says it."  
  
Achenar nodded. He spoke just as lightly, used to the acoustics of the big room with the reflecting pool. "If I can. The plan is for me to be back by my birthday, if nothing goes wrong, and I fully intend to take the straight route from K'veer into the city and then out Descent we've discussed. No going into strange Books for me."  
  
"I knew better than to think you would."  
  
"Father thinks you don't know I'm going."  
  
She raised an eyebrow.  
  
"Well, if he wants to insist I tell you and I just don't let him know I'm going to make it obvious enough for you to figure out..."  
  
She shook her head. "Hopeless, the two of you." The word hung in the air. "I didn't mean that."  
  
"I know what you meant."  
  
She had the most hope for him of anyone.


	2. Chapter 2

Achenar looked around and for the first time saw the room he'd helped imprison his father in and that his grandfather Gehn had also trapped him in.

He'd had the better prison in Haven.

There were no windows to look out on the cavern. He couldn't see anything outside the room. It just looked like a room made of stone.

He needed to get out, find Yeesha if he could, and get somewhere that didn't have three miles of solid rock hanging overhead. He hadn't expected the knowledge of that much weigh over him to hit as hard as it was.

And then there was the book on the table across the room, with one of his father's book locks on it.

He knew what it had to be before he walked over.

Myst.

The Age where he had been born.

The Age where he had lost himself.

It was still here, where it had always been.

He forced himself to turn around.

There was a mosaic in the middle of the floor. Ri'neref. Achenar must have Linked in directly on top of him.

Ri'neref looked like he was either judging Achenar or judging the fallen city outside. From everything Achenar knew, it could have been either way or both.

And then he heard the clicking sound of something on tile and a faint sound that was animal but not human.

There was something in K'veer that was not human from any Age.

"Shorah," he called out.

Nothing.

And then a sound not unlike Linking.

Which meant a Book had to have been left nearby.

He followed the sound out the one doorway that was open and found himself in a hallway.

Nothing. No Book. No being of any kind.

He felt watched.

Achenar did not like feeling watched with no clue who or what was watching him. That was what had happened every single time he had ever nearly been eaten by a cerpatee. There was nothing he could do but just follow the hallway.

He kept walking.

K'veer. Veovis' home until he'd been tossed into his own prison Age. Built as the palace for one of the five Lords and passed around between a very few noble families. Lord Rakeri, Veovis' father, had been the last. He'd died before the Fall, with varying opinions as to whether that was good luck or bad luck.

According to the old ways of assessing places in his youth with Sirrus, the building would be considered already raided. Whatever was left here or brought here was because it was valuable to Gehn but not valuable to Atrus or anyone on Releeshahn.

According to what he valued now, the total worth of the building was in whether or not the edible plants in the meditation garden by the cavern lake were still viable. Atrus said they were the last time he was there.

And then Achenar rounded a corner and there was the doorway.

An beyond the doorway was a great gathering gallery with a window three or four times as tall as a man.

And from the balcony for the first time in his life, Achenar saw the glow of D'ni. And off in the water, the dark splotch of Ae'gura. Further off, far in the distance, lay the city proper.

Home of his ancestors, the place of their second chance. The place they had fled from dying Garternay without bothering to see what their new Age was like beyond the natural fortress they claimed as their own.

Somewhere out there, the seep came down.

Below him, some kind of protective dome glowed.

It didn't look like it belonged there.

Atrus hadn't mentioned anything like this, only how to connect elsewhere using another exit of the room.

Achenar still felt watched. His thoughts were coming fast, feeling disconnected, as if any second he needed to wheel on the spot and move quickly another way.

He was in D'ni. He had a copy of the map with him and all the equipment he would need to reach the Cleft. Any time he wanted, there was a way back out.

He couldn't Link to safety, but there were ways to get there without all that much effort.

So long as he didn't Link anywhere else.

If he Linked anywhere else, it could be Haven all over again.

Which was why he had a hunting knife, whetstone, and two full canteens in his pack. He wasn't going to walk around openly armed, but he wasn't going to be caught without a cutting tool either.

He walked down the curving staircase and walked around whatever it was.

A glowing bubble with a contraption inside that trapped a thing.

A thing that looked like a worthless piece of rock decorated to make it look important. Trap bait for the intelligent.

He still felt like he was being watched, which only made it feel more like a trap.

He walked away and tried to find the way out.

There was no way out. There had been a wall collapse since Yeesha came through.

There was no way out. He couldn't even get down to the meditation garden. _Maybe_ he could force his way into Myst. He knew he could find food there if the Age hadn't completely degraded through neglect. It had been written and built as a refuge, not a permanent home. He'd always been told that..

And there was the trap. He could spring the trap.

Maybe that was where Yeesha had gone.

Achenar bowed his head in resignation. He only had one choice that could possibly lead to any kind of a future. And that choice was not making a rope out of his shirt, breaking the window out, and rappelling down the tower, much as he wished that might actually work.

The trap beckoned. Achenar took a deep breath and touched the glowing dome.

His hand went through. Nothing bad happened.

Achenar stepped through and found himself surrounded by a glowing ice scape.

And then a sandy beach.

And then a place with windows full of stars.

And then a sandy cave with rocks and some sort of writing on the walls.

Achenar stepped backward. He was surrounded by K'veer again. The glowing wall stood unchanging in front of him.

Whatever it was, that wasn't the trap.

He circled around it warily, making sure there wasn't anything obviously tricky about it. There wasn't.

He felt watched, trapped, and forced, and he did not like it at all.

He stepped through, prayed to the Maker for mercy, and touched the thing.

The feel on his fingers was practically indescribable. As if it was a physical object the same way Linking was a link and a Book was a book. There was a profound _depth _to it.

There was importance and power there, inescapable.

He heard something like a Link and stepped outside.

It was Yeesha, and her fingers were fidgeting out their private pseudo-mangree transliterated signal for silence from so very long ago.

"You will listen carefully," she told him in English. "This is not to be taken lightly."

He listened and took every word seriously.

Including the silent words of warning in her fingers to not speak D'ni and not reveal who he was.

"What you still don't understand, you have failed to hear or don't need to know. Begin."

And then she Linked him away. 


	3. Chapter 3

Achenar clenched his eyes shut in the sudden light.

He might only be an eighth D'ni and fully capable of being in bright light, but his ability to change between dark and light was all D'ni.

Why had Yeesha told him not to speak D'ni?

Why had Yeesha told him to keep who he was secret?

Why had she been wearing two bracelets on one wrist and a piece of leather on the other? And, for that matter, old Guild of Writer's colors she had clearly picked up somewhere in the city, fresh blood red and cavern shadows black against the unbleached tans and browns of the other clothing she was wearing?

The sound of Linking.

Achenar opened his eyes and turned toward the noise.

The man was D'ni dressed as pre-Fall D'ni, wearing Guild colors Achenar didn’t recognize. He was even wearing dark goggles.

He spoke in English, but his accent was terrible and his manners were worse.

And it was absolutely clear this man Esher knew and detested Yeesha for reasons Achenar didn't know. No wonder she had told Achenar to hide anything that might give away they were family. They had learned D'ni together and shared a common accent in it.

That was the important thing. Not what he was saying, not the instructions he was giving. Achenar didn’t want to trust anyone who seemed to hate his sister that much.

Esher touched his shoulder and Linked away.

The idea of people Linking without Books was profoundly disturbing. Especially now that he had time to process that Yeesha had forcibly Linked him here.

Then he processed through everything else.

This was the start of Descent.

Yeesha had forcibly Linked him between locations within an Age. For all Esher had mocked her for being a desert bird who dreams of flight, she was clearly flapping some impressive wings.

Maybe she was going to become the Grower.

And then Achenar felt deep relief. This was the start of Descent. He could find the Cleft easily enough from here, if he had to do so. And from the Cleft, Tomahna. And from Tomahna, anywhere he wanted to go.

He was the farthest thing from trapped.

And whatever this Quest he'd gotten himself into was, at least he'd be going through places that were important to him and his family.

_This was the last place Ti'ana was before she met Aitrus,_ he reminded himself silently in pure wonder. _Before she knew about Writing and Books and had to put up with the Guild of Linguists._

This place was why there would hopefully always be someone of D'ni living at Tomahna. It was too valuable to leave unwatched from that distance.

He also had the feeling this Quest was nothing he should walk away from lightly.

So, the hole in the ground…

He stared.

There was a Moiety dagger stuck in the ground. A huge one. One of the big stone monsters his mother had written into Riven before Achenar was born, if she'd described it correctly.

This really was where the Star Fissure sent things.

The hole was next to it, and when Yeesha went down she had left a sturdy ladder behind.

Good. He could still choose to leave if there was no other way. It was more than slightly reassuring. He climbed down slowly, letting his eyes adjust.

More of the noises. This time he saw them before they Linked away, a pair of them.

Intelligent and social. Bipedal primarily, but forward leaning. Definitely not mammalian in a way he was used to, but they could still be descended from protomammals.

And extremely shy, but curious.

He felt watched again.

_They are the ones watching,_ he thought. _If they can Link innately, why not Watch as Father does with his crystal viewer? Only they won't be as limited._

But _why_ were they watching?

He walked down the hallway he'd climbed into. _This is where they met, _he told himself._ Aitrus died never having seen the sun or felt its warmth._

The phrasing had become standard community history. Aitrus of D'ni had never seen his own primary star despite falling for a native girl who'd been tanned by it until she fell for him.

And Ti'ana had been a child of the desert sun.

He finally came to a chamber he knew from his father's stories. One of the resting places that had been built all over the ramp of the Great Shaft.

A journal lay on the bed. He opened it and recognized Yeesha's handwriting.

He also recognized that it was meant to be at least the second in a series. The other must be nearby. He looked through the hallway, then settled into the room.

Atrus had been here with Gehn as they went down Descent. Before Atrus had known his father for who he really was.

Achenar had no clue how long he had been awake, but he'd have bet money it was far too long. And he didn't bet.

Right now, he had a soft place to sleep that was equipped for sleeping. Not like the first days on Haven had been, although he'd been prepared to rough it if he needed to do so.

And he could pass off his jerking awake from nightmares as just being in an unfamiliar place to anyone watching if he had to.

* * *

Achenar slept until he could no longer drop off again after the nightmares.

Other than the watch he hadn't set to cavern time yet, his only source of timesense was his own body clock. If he needed to reset it later, he would. For now, he'd do as he felt he needed.

Rested and fed from his pack, Achenar looked around again and discovered he'd spent the night near a Linking Book that looked so beautiful he was almost sure it was a trap for the unwary.

Except the D'ni would not have left a trap only their own people would understand in the path of Descent. The Book had to include a Linking Book back to here and no further along Descent.

Besides, Yeesha had taken the same Quest and failed, or so she said. She would know if there was any way he could become trapped and she said nothing. Esher didn't even know he understood Linking Books and he hadn't warned Achenar about the Book with the pretty box on the open page.

And besides, this was a Quest. It was highly unlikely a Quest would only involve walking Descent.

The Book had to be safe.

And if not, he had his hunting knife, whetstone, enough food to walk for over a week, and slightly less than full canteens.

Achenar closed his eyes, silently prayed to the Maker for mercy on fools who used unfamiliar Books, and Linked.

He arrived in a dim Age that was as beautiful as the memory chamber on Serenia had been when he was a child.

Glowing plants. Gentle water.

More glowing domes. Good. He was on the right track.

He was glad he'd brought the unread journals with him. He'd leave them alone until he was sure Esher couldn't disrupt his reactions... and therefore observe them.

Whatever Yeesha had written would have clearly been meant for a stranger who stumbled into the Quest. She wouldn't have left out anything he'd have objected to or made sure her words wouldn't otherwise hurt him. And she would have left out things she would have wanted her big brother to know but not all of the Age of Earth.

Esher shouldn't see him reading it. But how could he hide from a man who Linked at will?

The sound of a man Linking interrupted Achenar's thoughts. "Ah, Direbo." Esher told Achenar about the Age and then started insulting the domes and the Linking pedestals inside for not being the proper D'ni way to do things.

And then spoke of 'the creatures' as if they neither had a proper name nor deserved one. And spoke of them watching. And identified them as the source of the non-D'ni Linking method while insulting them as 'not like us'.

He left before Achenar could consider giving into the urge to punch him in the mouth.

There was another people the Maker had given the gift of traveling between Ages to! The D'ni and the other children of Garternay weren't the only ones!

Achenar wished he could study them. Who were these others? What did they call themselves? What did Linking anywhere anytime do to the development of a people? Did they all do it, or was it a learned thing like Writing? And if they all did it, when in life did they learn how to control it and when in their history did the basic ability develop?

Maybe the Guild Masters were correct and he ought to be the one to bring the Guild Of Linguists back.

Whatever happened, he needed a name to use for them _now_. He wasn't calling them 'the creatures' in his head as if they were vermin.

Esher probably thought they _were_ vermin.

He clearly wouldn't be able to pronounce their term for themselves. So, what it would translate to might be entirely up to him no matter what the future held.

_ I'll call them and the Ronay branch of humanity the Gifted, since _ Words _says Linking is a gift from the Maker. And the Others may be the easiest placeholder for now. _

He'd have to think of something else later, after he had found out more.

There was nothing to do but go on once he had unlocked the gates that might later let him move around on this Age freely.

He stepped into the glowing dome and saw the icescape around him.

He shivered involuntarily. He was still adapted to heat. Wet or dry, but heat. Releeshahn didn't have a true winter, not with snow and ice that stayed on the ground over a day.

There was no way he ever would have thought that spending time on Rime would have helped prepare him to look for Yeesha.

At least he would be a convincing native of Earth to Esher, who would have no reason to believe anyone native to Earth was adapted to cold. There was no way Esher knew about the ice caps.

There was probably no way Esher would believe the ice caps existed. At least not until someone dragged him all the way from Descent to the nearest glacier.

Esher seemed like the sort of man who would stay exactly where he already knew instead of exploring with a safe means of retreat if given the ability to Link anywhere at will. Achenar fully expected to find he spent most of his time in D'ni and wherever he'd run to during the Fall. Maybe a private Age if he'd owned one, maybe Ages he'd gone to before the Fall.

He could Link freely, but he was probably far less traveled than Achenar. And Achenar had turned into a homebody, really.

Enough delaying in thought. He reached out his hand and touched the pedestal.


	4. Chapter 4

The shock of cold made him gasp.

At least whatever Age this was did not have the weather Rime did. It was freezing, but not enough for his lungs to ache.

His clothing wouldn't be enough to keep him comfortable, but it would be enough to keep him alive.

And the pedestal the Others had placed _should_ be able to return him to Direbo if he needed to warm up.

He even tested it, just to be sure. As long as he knew how to get back to the pedestal, he could return to Direbo and warmth. And from Direbo to Descent. And from Descent to the Cleft and Tomahna.

Linking might be a gift of the Maker, but home was where he belonged after his travels.

Achenar steeled himself and stepped outside.

He was in an ice cave. No wonder there hadn't been any wind chill. The wind chill was all outside and waiting for him to do so much as stick his nose outside. He'd be lucky if he wasn't treating his own frostbite before night fell.

Esher Linked and as usual didn't even seem to notice that he was the only one talking.

Which was fine with Achenar.

It meant he missed Achenar's reaction on being told this was the prison Age Tahgira.

A prison Age.

Achenar was standing in an actual D'ni prison Age. The kind prisoners never left. One step down from what they individually designed for Veovis.

He came back to himself well enough and long enough to catch Esher's explanation of how to use the slate and how to leave the cave. Then he let himself indulge in the anxiety shakes after Esher disappeared.

He was back in a prison Age.

What kind of Quest required visiting a prison Age? Particularly given he of all people understood the concept. It didn't really matter who Wrote it.

Which meant the Quest was not about the concept. It was either about who Wrote the Link or about whoever had been held here.

And then he processed what Esher had said about Yeesha's opinion of prison Ages and felt warm inside. _I love you too, Lil Sis._

He felt warm inside until he followed Esher's hint and felt the ice break under him.

He was already trying to climb back up the ice fall even as it was still falling.

No! He couldn't make it up! And it wasn't dense enough to carve climbing holds using his knife. He couldn't get back to his way out.

_Yahvo, help me!_

He couldn't do this again. Even on a world as hospitable as Haven had been, he couldn't do this again.

He sat there, stunned and cold and growing colder as he tried to calm his racing heart and mind.

At least he still had the slate, whatever good that would do for him. He'd prefer a Linking Book. Or a grappling hook -- at this point one would be as useful as the other.

_Yeesha would have warned me. There has to be another way out of here. She wouldn't have let me be tricked into another prison Age, this time to die there._

And then he felt like a fool.

_Yeesha can Link at will now, it seems. If she can Link me within an Age, she can surely Link herself between them. She knows where I am. She can come get me. She would not leave me here to die._

Shaking from fear became shaking in relief.

He finally got cold enough that he had to stand up and start moving regardless of if his knees wanted to hold him up.

So Tahgira was an ice Age. Or an Age in an ice age.

He wished he was somewhere where someone could laugh at the horrible joke. But he wasn't and all his wishing was never going to change that.

There was a ladder from the ice plain he was on up to a higher level. Obviously whatever the inhabitant or inhabitants had put together for themselves was not near the sheltered Link point.

Or the D'ni had Linked in somewhere else and the Others had meant something by their choice of pedestal placement.

He could spend years trying to think through all of it.

He got to the top and saw another pedestal. This one had a symbol on it.

It only took him a few moments to figure out the trick. He'd been well trained by Atrus' love of puzzle locks.

He'd never been gladder for those puzzle locks than when he was standing back in Direbo, defrosting his nose hairs and considering what to do next.

Next step: find their shelter. There had to be another source of shelter on Tahgira. The ice cave had never been slept in.

And there was no way anyone of any significant Ronay heritage could possibly sleep in the open on snow, no matter how desperate. It was a wonder they hadn't all gone completely snowblind, even with the dimmer star.

Another next step: figure out why it was important the slate could be written on. He'd been lucky he could carry it up the ladder. If he hadn't kept up the strength he'd gained from necessity on Haven...

Strength Esher and Yeesha would not have had when they took the Quest. There was some trick he'd missed that would have gotten them up on the second level.

But whatever he'd skipped doing, it wasn't enough to make him instantly fail the Quest. Achenar thought warm thoughts and Linked to Tahgira.

* * *

Achenar stared at the bridge across the icy chasm. There was no way even Atrus could have managed that without outside supplies. And a prison Age by definition did not have outside supplies. There shouldn't have even been a way to request they be brought there by the next prisoner.

Had the Guild Of Maintainers or someone else built it for purposes of getting the Age minimally enough suited for life that Linking a prisoner here wouldn't be outright murder?

The sun was beginning to set. He either needed to find shelter where the prisoners had _or_ he needed to retreat across to the cave or Direbo.

Achenar walked across the bridge.

The settlement was at the far end, mostly blocked from view from the cave by the ice walls the second pedestal had been beside.

No one looking from the cave could have seen much of anything worthwhile no matter how long they observed.

And there was no way the prisoners built the settlement using only what they were supposed to have carried in.

Esher appeared just long enough to praise the prisoners' ingenuity, claim it as a D'ni trait, and express a desire to rebuild.

Achenar nearly laughed when he'd Linked away again.

Ingenuity? You could know exactly what you wanted, but unless you had tools and supplies... you'd be in the same position he was in Haven when he realized there would never be a proper whetstone.

And it certainly was neither a universal D'ni trait nor one exclusive to the D'ni. The D'ni merely had the advantage of being Ronay, inheritors of a long history of basic research.

It only took a basic inspection to realize the huts were merely as protective as they had to be. Lifted, to keep the ground from stealing the warmth because even however they got the grass to grow wouldn't be enough to keep someone alive once their clothing began to wear thinner. Open sided on the side away from the wind, and he saw no way to block the opening for privacy.

Even his base in the wreck on Haven had been better defense from the weather.

The sun was too far down to return to the cave unless he truly needed to, even though he'd found another pedestal and put the slate there for the night.

Besides, who knew what the Quest required? There might be something he needed to see.

Maybe running to the warmth of Direbo was what had made Esher fail. He seemed like the type to do that.

Wherever he'd found to run from the Fall, it was not a world of extremes. He'd found someplace that hadn't ground the softness of the city out of him.

Achenar had met enough survivors to pick that much up. You could tell where someone had gone, how many people were with them.

Esher was still city-soft. Achenar couldn't read him about the rest. There was something profoundly off about him. He should be like one of the men who lived practically as hermits on the edges of Releeshahn, those Guildsmen who were scraping along on hard Ages in twos and threes long enough they had started to forget how to be comfortable in crowds.

Achenar had a rising suspicion that however alone it appeared Esher was now, he had never survived on his own.


	5. Chapter 5

The hut was still bitterly cold at night, despite the attempts to mitigate it. Achenar shivered himself to sleep every time he woke up until the creeping light of the new day told him trying again was a worthless pursuit.

The morning was full of things that simply did not fit. There was no way anything other than maybe the walls of the huts were built out of native materials. Especially the piping for their heating system.

Something was profoundly wrong with Tahgira.

Esher turned up again when he found the routing controls. Achenar was already getting sick of his praise for the D'ni above all others.

Achenar had to fight the urge to comment on the bacteria in the water being the opposite of those on Riven.

Riven had been one of Gehn's Ages. No one outside the family knew that detail, and Atrus' friend had been as good as family even before he helped save Yeesha.

He also had to fight the urge to punch him just before he Linked away again.

"There is no longer heat in this place. But you can make them bring it."

'Make them.'

Achenar knew that tone. He'd heard it before. A thousand times and more, in Sirrus' voice.

In his own voice.

Esher clearly saw the Others as servants or as slaves. No wonder he spoke so poorly of them.

'Help and hindrance', Yeesha had said. Well, Achenar now knew to be as wary of Esher as he would have been around Sirrus that awful day on Serenia.

He even had the start of a theory on how it was Esher hadn't survived on his own. After all, it was only other humans he didn't see evidence of.

Trust nothing, check everything, and be prepared to be tricked, trapped, or double-crossed.

Fine, then. He knew there was a way to ask the Others to help him. He just needed to find it.

Achenar felt exceedingly stupid after he finally figured out he needed to just put the slate down and back away slowly.

After all he had to go through with the northern mangrees after the terrible things he'd done, he would have thought he understood how to deal with skittish and shy thinking beings.

Apparently he had not. Or at least not learned well enough. In any case, it had taken longer than it should have.

Esher appeared, spoke of the tombs, claimed the rest of the D'ni were innocent, and gave final instructions for finishing this stage of the Quest.

When he left, Achenar knelt in prayer.

Prayers for the dead here and the last of them who lay somewhere in the snow because no one would have been left to bury him.

Maybe Yeesha had found him and given him at least cursory rites and burial when she came here.

He also offered prayers for their unknown victims.

And then he offered prayers of thanksgiving to the Maker that he had found Haven instead and returned to the Maker's path before it was too late for him to change, as it had been for Sirrus.

He finished with a prayer that Yeesha had not been too horribly disturbed whenever she had come here. He had no idea if she had been the young woman who had left them when she came here or the grown woman confident in her own strength who had met him on K'veer.

He found the way to the Keep and tried to act properly glad at Esher's praise.

It was easy, compared to trying to fool Sirrus.

Esher left.

Achenar was alone and knew Esher wouldn't contact him until he was back in Descent. Back on Earth. That was where Esher would be Watching and what he would be Watching for. He wouldn't care what Achenar did on Tahgira now.

He sat down and pulled out Yeesha's journals.

It was strange and disturbing, reading her words as she wrote as if he'd died. But it did make sense -- when she had left, he'd still rarely visited Earth and never gone to Releeshahn. She never explicitly said that he was dead, but the tone was there, the same way his father had been speaking about him to the other survivors at the time she left.

It was hard to see her write about their great-grandmother as a person in history. Especially when Achenar could still remember the feel of her arms if he focused very hard on the memory of her hugs.

Harder still was reading Yeesha's frank description of his crimes. Back when she had left, he would have completely agreed with her.

Now, he mostly did. The reformation had, after all, clearly stuck. He'd saved the mangrees when the storm scoured Haven, not the gold on the wreck. He could Link to Ages without first considering how they could be exploited. He'd even found a sort of contentment living in his house in the orchard where friends knew how to find him and the mangrees came and went as they willed.

"I will never return to that place."

When had Yeesha been to Myst? When had _Yeesha_ ever been to _Myst_? Unless she had been the one to put the lock on the Book in K'veer, which he could see her doing if she'd had the material know-how and she certainly did.

Besides, by now it was probably becoming unstable. The only thing that could draw anyone there was Ti'ana's grave, and given what the Maker had said and what Esher clearly must think, maybe it was best she lie unmolested on the Age she Wrote to protect her family from her own son Gehn.

Achenar hoped the Quest wouldn't require him to go back there. The last place he wanted to go was the scene of his crimes, and he would never be able to hide his identity from Esher there.

All it would take was being respectful to Ti'ana's grave once and he would know.

Achenar put the slate in the Keep and Linked away. There was no more reason to delay it. One trip through Direbo and he was back where he started in Descent.

One slate down, three obviously left to go.


	6. Chapter 6

Esher met him again at the top of the Great Shaft, ruining his moment of wonder that Aitrus had been involved in building it. Or at least he thought it was the Great Shaft -- it was certainly one of the ventilation fans that was supposed to have topped it so clean air would filter down.

Esher merely confirmed he had tried the Quest and failed before giving the most obvious instructions possible and Linking away.

Well, only the most obvious instructions possible if you were familiar with D'ni technology and also had Aitrus' personal map halfway memorized.

Maybe he should humor Esher when he gave directions. It wasn't like Achenar could simply pull his copy of that precious map out of the bottom of his pack to check it.

Hopefully he wouldn't be going far enough to need to. The Great Shaft was three miles on its own without counting that was vertical length only. Atrus and Aitrus both claimed it was several days of walking unless the lifts worked and they didn't anymore. It was going to be at least three days of walking.

If Achenar had been an invading army, he would have given up now. There was no way.

He followed Esher's directions and was struck dumb with awe even as Esher came and bragged and blamed Ti'ana as if she had personally murdered the entire city.

Esher Linked away before Achenar could decide to finish the job.

Well. He'd make contact on the next Age.

Time to look for and read more from Yeesha while he wasn't watching.

Achenar found two more journals and realized another had been missed in his pack when he sat down to read.

This was the history he knew.

His own failures.

Gehn's failing and final entrapment after he had hurt so many.

The attempts to reclaim D'ni that had ended in the Writing of Releeshahn as another new start.

It was strange, reading Yeesha's views of it all.

She still wrote as if he had died, as if he had not been set free, as if she did not want anyone else who might attempt the Quest to know Achenar son of Atrus lived. But then, as far as she knew nothing after she left had happened: he was still on Haven and only a handful of the closest family friends on Releeshahn knew he still breathed.

And he realized she and Esher were both calling them the Bahro. The same ugly word Eedrah's kin on Terahnee had used for their non-Ronay slaves when they _weren't_ trying to sound proper.

Yeesha should know better than to call anyone that.

He was not going to call the Others that.

Even if he was ordering them around.

Even if the Quest required him to treat them the way Esher spoke of them.

Even if he found himself profoundly curious about the symbol Yeesha had written in one of the journals.

He was worried about her talk of feeling like she shared mindspace with someone else. Had the events on Serenia turned her into a prophetess? He'd worried about it then, but this...

And her unquestioning surety she was the Grower... Although forcibly Linking him a distance of less than fifty miles within an Age did lend some support to the claim, being that certain even a single prophecy unfulfilled meant _you_ was not a good thing.

He knew now absolutely that they had both gone on the Quest and failed. They could be a help, but since they had both failed they could both prove a hindrance and they might not even know _why_ they had failed.

They might not have even failed the same way. Yeesha and Esher were incredibly different people, after all, in much the same way that north and south were different.

After the night on the ice, figuring out that heating system, finding all the new journals, and pondering through everything, he was already yawning.

Then again, for all he knew he was tired on schedule. He had no way of telling what the time was on the surface without returning to the Caldera and watching the sun.

Which seemed to go against the spirit of the Quest.

It was also unusual enough that Esher might have some way to notice and realize Achenar was not simply some non-Ronay struck dumb with wonder, but instead someone familiar enough with time differences from travel between Ages to know to find a time schedule to live on.

So instead he holed up for the 'night' in the resting chamber, wondering if Yeesha or Atrus had slept here on their way down.

He woke for the 'day' when he could no longer fall back to sleep after a nightmare.


	7. Chapter 7

Direbo was unchanged. Unlock gates in case he needed the pathways open later, walk over to the pedestal, Link to the unknown -- a starscape this time.

He stepped outside and was immediately incapable of speaking even if he'd wanted to.

Achenar had never knowingly been on a moon before. No one in his family liked taking the risks involved in Writing advanced orbital mechanics. Even something as simple as Earth's moon was beyond Atrus' preferences.

Achenar had seen gas giants. He'd seen Saturn's rings through Atrus' telescope on Tomahna. He'd been on Ages where there was a neighboring gas giant. As Atrus told him once, a large target for space impacts helped give Ages stability.

Meteor strikes could destabilize anything. There were enough small ones zooming past as it was, delicate lines of white flying from one horizon to the other. Achenar tried to ignore them. Memories of Cries-Down-The-Stars and Channelwood were the last thing he needed to be dwelling on right now.

This Age was a moon with a bright blue ringed gas giant filling an awe-inspiring portion of the sky. There was nothing else but stars and he wasn't sure how the air was thick enough to breathe but it was.

Whoever had written this Age was one of the great master Writers of old. Gehn could have never cobbled this together. _Maybe_ Katran would have been able if she'd kept learning after Ti'ana's death instead of stopping in grief and never picking up her pen again.

Ti'ana would have known better than to try. She stuck to what she knew of D'ni compositional rules, and what she knew wasn't all that much.

This was no prison Age. You simply didn't waste Writing like this on a place no one would ever return from. It might have turned into one by accident after the Fall, but it was nothing like Tahgira.

Achenar also doubted a prison Age would have such accessible cliffs at the Link point. Driving those so condemned to immediate suicide was not the goal. But then, who could know if the Others were using the original Link points the D'ni had used.

Esher didn't show his face until Achenar had found an observatory Atrus might have been willing to commit atrocities for. And not minor atrocities, either.

He identified it as Todelmer, an unfinished observatory Age, and blamed Ti'ana for everything again. He stressed that Yeesha shouldn't have the Tablet -- and Achenar had to resist rolling his eyes since he'd already taken her word for that.

Esher left him alone again.

"So this was one of the last projects," Achenar whispered to himself in English.

Todelmer was not from the great royal years of huge public projects. It was of the last days.

Todelmer was the decadence before the Fall.

And then, it hit him. He had heard of this place.

_'They rejoice at a star, / Though they never see the sun,'_ he repeated to himself in his head.

Todelmer had been an active project at the time of the Fall. Descent had been abandoned before anyone had seen the sun. They'd sealed it at night, in fear for their eyes.

The Maker had disdained the effort put into this place. Thousands of years before it was made.

He almost laughed from a memory of one of Ti'ana's tales from Earth, of the people who tried to build to the heavens from their pride and were scattered by the Maker for their hubris.

This was the pride of the D'ni. The wonder they never had to share. Front row seats to a gas giant and they knew nothing about the skies of Earth.

It was still beautiful, but there was a bittersweet edge to it all now.

Achenar couldn't look at the observatory now without wondering if it had been paid for with an atrocity or five in the first place. He would not put it past them.

And there were signs on Tahgira that at least one prison Age had a supply line from the outside.

Something was rotten about the last days of D'ni.

Figuring out how to get the observatory running was slightly more of a pain than going through Voltaic had been in his youth, but he was older now and with age came knowledge, patience, and the bullheaded determination of the D'ni who had built the thing in the first place.

It was almost enjoyable. He hadn't had a mechanical challenge in years, at least not a satisfying one. He'd had far too many social challenges to take the time to engineer anything, his father tended to be the go-to planner for such projects, and Achenar's potential as linguist meant no one wanted to risk him to dangerous hands-on work beyond his own home repairs. Which was why he'd snuck off to try to find Yeesha instead of announcing the trip.

The only thing that ruined the day was Esher coming to tell him using 'the creatures' was the only way to get where he needed to go.

And that his goal was somewhere above.

This time the tone of his final command "make them" was even more infuriating.

The D'ni had laws about treating anyone like a slave. Ri’neref had written them himself. How could Esher have fallen so far?

Or had they all been falling that far, only a push away at the end and the Fall came before they could cross that line?

Achenar pondered as he finished fixing the observatory, then decided it was time to use the slate for more than a means of travel.

First, he'd try whatever that symbol from Yeesha was. He'd been wondering all day but there was no moment when using it felt right.

Better to be in a pattern the Others might understand if he was going to order them around. Pedestal symbols only until he could go no further, then other requests.

An Other appeared and bowed toward Achenar while making a noise that sounded... welcoming, compared to what else he'd heard from them, but of course that was welcoming to human ears and Maker only knew what it sounded like to them.

It left the slate.

So, not a location or a command. A pictogram, then. It made sense -- the location images would have hardly work if they couldn't understand the concept of symbology and the symbol resembled a pair of people.

He'd have to look at the journal again later, try to figure it out in context. It obviously wasn't whatever command he needed to give them now.

Which left the other one. Whatever it did.

Achenar wrote the symbol, set the slate down, backed up, and proceeded to not want to admit what his eyes were telling him.

Time.

The Others were manipulating time.

The gas giant churned above, rings visibly orbiting.

He was still awestruck when the effect ended. He couldn't remember the last time he had trembled like this.

It took a little while to figure out everything else, and then he had to repeat the terrifying experience again while praying to the Maker that he wasn't losing months while his mother and Vahtah fretted for him.

But eventually the pod in the rings came into view. Another look through the observatory and some walking later, he was staring at a glowing symbol on a pedestal and praying the pod had not become unpressurized.

He touched it and Linked.

A breath later, Achenar was in the pod orbiting the gas giant. There was more than enough space to move around in, but if the thought of three miles of rock over his head had been uncomfortable then thousands of miles of nothing under his feet was so much worse.

Esher made a predictable appearance. Power of the Tablet, miserable creatures, and so on. Achenar began wondering if his mind was going when he stuck Ti'ana's guilt on Yeesha. And then he tried to bait Achenar with what could be again if the Tablet were used a certain way.

He left.

Achenar stood, shaking.

The Tablet must control the Others even more than the slates did, somehow. What Esher was proposing was unconscionable to him now.

How had they been bound at all? They could Link wherever they pleased, they could manipulate time. How could someone hurt them, much less enslave them?

Because that was what it amounted to. Slavery. Achenar wanted a stronger word but failed to find it, this was binding of souls not binding of laws, as deep and mighty and horrible in difference as what the cruelties and moral obscenities he had committed as a young adult were to the times he'd shoved Sirrus while playing on Myst as small children.

And Esher had sought this Tablet.

Worse, _Yeesha_, dear sweet little Yeesha who had been so worried about his soul she'd promised to pray for him every night, had sought this Tablet.

She had spoken of the Tablet as seductive. Achenar was sure he knew what kind of seduction, intimately.

_"Perhaps you will see how to release them."_

So he was on a Quest for the Tablet. The Tablet which was _exactly_ the sort of lure to power he should never be trusted with. And he was also supposed to be looking for a way to break the power of the Tablet which controlled beings who could play time like a lute and Link wherever they wanted to.

And the Maker warned everyone before he was born that he should not be trusted.

It was impossible.

There was no way his soul was not endangered in this somehow. Not with that kind of built-in Jakooth's trap.

Achenar admired the views for the short while he could stand feeling so trapped and vulnerable, then made his way back to the Great Shaft.

* * *

The ramp was broken, but someone -- or several someones -- had gotten the lift running again. Achenar picked up another journal by the controls and read it on the way down.

His heart ached at her uncertainty about the Maker and the Maker's purpose.

But then he was the religious one out of the two of them. She was the one who had any space to doubt. And neither he nor Vahtah had ever told her of his nightmares.

His nightmares were the best proof he had.

Esher showed up at the bottom. At least he barely bragged before leaving.

Achenar pretended to bumble through getting the fans going while silently praising Aitrus' foresight in leaving basic instructions for his descendants.

He picked up two more journals along the way and kept them for later.

Another resting chamber with another Linking Book to Direbo. Achenar knew by now that Esher would leave him alone here. It was safe to keep reading now.

First, the older journal with the symbol he had tried on Todelmer. She wrote of friendship, and it was obvious she remembered Achenar's talk on how important friendly overtures were. The bowing was a very human thing, but the Other who had come to the slate knew Achenar was human.

The newer journals were more disturbing.

"My brothers were not to be released. But the Maker turned my poor choice to some small good, and Achenar was redeemed."

A _small_ good? Yes, it was a matter of one man's soul and yes, there were some significant lingering questions about the final destination of that soul, but...

And speaking as though he wasn't released, when he was free to leave. He'd just made a home on Haven and then it took the scouring of the island to get him to leave and join the other survivors.

After she'd left. He had to remember she thought he was still on Haven when she'd written these words.

And then a symbol and talk of singing to the Maker. Achenar was fairly sure he knew what it meant. And from her description, he was fairly sure he would like to get to know the Others as well as Yeesha did.

If they could thank the Maker even while still enslaved in such a manner, he wanted to know how they found the faith for it.

He had certainly had enough of a religious crisis for one lifetime simply from finding out he was in _Words_.

The other new journal was simply about her preparations to enter D'ni and her reasons. Again, she left out all signs Achenar might be alive.

Again, he could not find a reason to fault her silence.

Between Todelmer and the ride down, it had been a trying 'day'.

_I may be halfway there,_ he told himself as he inspected his rations and ate. _Another few days and I still won't be in trouble. And I know enough if I am to find a way. I know some of the plants on Direbo look like what I was planning to harvest on K'veer, and why wouldn't they be? Food and drinking water on an Age for resting, so much easier than trying to keep these resting chambers stocked. But I have time before I have to test that. Even if it takes this long to do the rest..._

But he still had no idea what he would need to do once the Tablet was released. Or how.

_The Maker must have some plan for all of this,_ he told himself as he laid down. _The Grower possibly beginning to fly. The D'ni, the old and mighty D'ni, Fallen and no matter. And the man no one is supposed to trust actively deceiving the one person who could object and have any impact at all._

The thought caught in his mind.

_Why_ was Esher involved in this at all? Yeesha said there were no second chances. He'd used up his chance as surely as she had. And he obviously detested the Others, possibly even more than he detested Ti'ana. He couldn't control them, and he had no thought to helping them.

_Esher is hiding something,_ Achenar realized. _Something big. Either he is trying to corrupt me as Sirrus did so he can control them through me, or he has something else in mind. I have to be as sharp and careful as I was with Sirrus on Serenia, no question about it now. And I can only trust him where there is no other option._


	8. Chapter 8

Sleep. Nightmares. Prayers. A point where he could rest no more. The pattern was becoming familiar. Too familiar. He was used to waking in the night, but he was also used to getting more _sleep_ between the faces of the people whose lives he'd damaged or destroyed.

He wished he could ask Vahtah for advice.

He wished he could let Vahtah give Esher a piece of her mind on which to choke. She'd probably enjoy it.

He would certainly enjoy watching that.

The longer he delayed, the longer it would be before he could see her again. He liked having a friend. He had forgotten how much loneliness could wear in these long decades since the mangree had Named him anew.

Direbo. The image of a beach around him. Linking.

Achenar was beginning to understand why the Maker had needed to remind his ancestors that Linking was a _gift_. Between Linking Books and pedestals, he'd been popping up here and there twenty times a day since the Quest began. The wonder was wearing off fast, even with the unfamiliarity.

Esher was waiting for him on the beach and Achenar could barely believe his ears.

This was the Age that Esher had run to.

This was an Age that belonged to the Others, not the D'ni.

The Others had not welcomed him -- and Achenar couldn't blame them, the way he spoke about them for not being D'ni. But it had been enough contact with other beings that Esher had not become like the aging hermits of Releeshahn.

"You will learn here as well. It is not like the other Ages." Esher Linked away and left Achenar standing there in thought.

This held sweet promise.

An Age controlled by the Others meant an Age without a reference in _Words_ to the wrongs of the D'ni in their ancient might. He'd be learning about them, not the D'ni. He might even find clues to how the Tablet bound them and how it could be undone.

If nothing else, this played to his natural skills and not the ones he learned from his father out of necessity.

A new people who knew of the Maker and Linked -- Linked! -- to learn as much as he could about in the time he was here.

_Maybe I should give in about restarting the Guild Of Linguists..._

Achenar didn't worry about solving anything for hours. He simply copied the gesture he thought meant 'friendship' in case any of the Others were Watching, rushing it in the joy of the moment, and then he proceeded to get into anything and anywhere he could without harming anything.

The snakes startled him the first few times he saw them, but they were skittish enough he quickly got used to having them around. He hadn't needed to avoid any on Haven, since those were all nonvenomous.

To judge by color, these might not be. But he expected Esher would have warned him of that. Whatever plan he had needed Achenar alive and trusting until the Tablet was released, that much was clear.

It was a wonderful day -- they had pottery, and wrote things even if Achenar couldn't make sense of any of it, and it looked like they fished -- until he peeked in the windows of the stone structure above.

There was the faintest odor from inside, blown through by the airflow in the windows.

He knew that odor. Yeesha thank the Maker should not have been able to recognize it.

Old blood. Fear sweat -- now he was sure the Others were descended from protomammals. The must of things kept hidden.

The musk from the person responsible for the rest getting a little too much pleasure and excitement from what he was doing.

Other than the earthy overtones, it was almost the way his secret cache on his father's Mechanical Age had smelled the last time he had been there. Well, and the missing tang of ozone.

The memory was so real for a moment that he needed to sit down on the grass for a while.

Fear sweat was probably about the same among anything with sweat glands. Those chemical pathways didn't tend to adapt between Ages.

That musk was a different story. It was unmistakably human in origin. Someone with more samples to compare it to might have even been able to trace it to a single Age or at least a branch of the Tree Of Possibilities.

And there was only one human who had been here recently enough to be the source.

_No wonder they don't like you, Esher._

He remembered Shrieker and the concussion Shrieker's widow had given him after he'd tried to apologize with words that held less regret than he thought they did.

_People don't like murderers and torturers who Link into their paradises._

Achenar repeated the 'friendship' bow when he finally got up, somberly and as formally as he could manage with the thoughts swirling in his head.

He spent the next few hours -- it felt that long -- figuring out how to get the one closed doorway on the island completely open.

He knew it was open because of the smell coming from inside. Whatever chamber of horrors was in there, Achenar had a straight path inside to access it.

He was tired and weary from everything he had done on Noloben.

It was their world, not an Age of the D'ni, but he hadn't seen any of them who weren't obeying him.

The Others were staying as hidden from sight as the slaves of Terahnee.

Achenar made his way back to the Great Shaft to sleep and eat.

The least he could bear to do was let them have their island back during the time he wasn't doing anything there to help them. Unfortunately, right now it also seemed to be the most he could do.

The nightmares were more horrific than ever, but he knew it would have been worse if he had gone in and then tried to sleep.

As it was, Achenar's final prayer in the morning was for the Maker's mercies as he faced whatever horrors lay inside the rock and tried to go on with his life afterward.

He hadn't smelled that odor since before Haven.

He'd hoped he never would again.


	9. Chapter 9

It was a hundred times worse in the tunnel. Achenar wouldn't have been surprised if the Others had abandoned this island after Esher did whatever he had done.

Achenar certainly wanted to abandon it now.

He also wanted to use some of his mother's favorite Rivenese words to describe the entire situation.

Esher was waiting for him on the steps up.

Of course Esher was waiting. He knew this place well. There was nothing _he_ needed to fear here.

"You have unlocked my lab."

Now Achenar knew why he hadn't recognized Esher's Guild colors. Guild of Zoology, and early in the ranks. Possibly not even to the Age of Maturity when the Fall occurred, and Achenar berated himself a bit for not realizing Esher might be that _young_. Same half-sensical education Gehn had gotten from the Guild of Bookmakers only with more dissection and fewer papercuts.

The zoologists were another dead guild. Even with Esher alive, he'd have been tossed out for whatever he did here. Or, at least, the guild traditions and D'ni law would have required him to be tossed out.

"I take no pleasure in what they have endured here, but I had to learn."

He could have learned to ask. And that musk in the air revealed the lie -- Esher _had_ enjoyed what he was doing, whether he admitted it to himself or not.

Esher told him many things he presumed Yeesha hadn't. Other than the Others' fear of snakes, Achenar had already figured most of it out. And given how venomous the snakes looked, Achenar didn't blame them.

Esher had grown up in the D'ni cavern. He'd never needed to learn some snakes should be feared in the gut because the mind reacts too slowly to save you.

"They are terrifying creatures if not controlled."

_You are a terrifying creature who is out of control._

And then he called the lab a refuge -- for Esher, not the Others, and probably because the Others wouldn't come near it -- and told Achenar to find the way up.

And then Esher Linked away and left Achenar alone in the dim dank horror chamber to explore.

Achenar would have rather been almost anywhere else.

All right. There was no avoiding it. He'd do as Esher said to open the way up, then use the slate and pedestals to Link in. He only wanted to walk through the laboratory one time.

He wasn't sure he could handle it more than once.

The whole time he was arranging things, he began thinking he understood Yeesha's question.

She wasn't questioning whether the Maker existed, exactly.

Asking whether something was by the will of the Maker or by the roll -- the simple possibilities that decide what branch of the Tree of Possibilities any natural moment of chance brings -- was a different question entirely.

If this was by the roll, then Achenar had simply bumbled into the Quest. His past didn't figure into anything. It was merely the act of Linking to K'veer and _maybe_ being able to complete the Quest without failing.

If this was by the will of the Maker, then Achenar had been selected for this. His past mattered. It might even be why his life had been spared at Serenia, why decades of nightmares had let him confront what he'd done and process through it all. The Tablet had been kept in K'veer because he would Link there after Yeesha and have no reasons to go elsewhere.

If it was by the roll, there might be no hope for the Others.

If it was from the will of the Maker, then even if he failed Achenar might be able to bring some small good for the Others out of it.

Achenar clearly hoped it was by the will of the Maker. The alternative was cruel to everyone involved.

He Linked back into the lab and climbed.

Every single word he wanted to use was Rivenese.

A cage. A cage not even open on top, as if that would give the captive within too much hope for Esher's taste. And how could he possibly keep a creature that could Link...

Achenar slapped his forehead.

The snakes. Of course. The Others were native to this ecosystem. Linking was their means of fleeing, and if anything evolved with them to prevent that...

Esher had made their own biology into a cage.

Achenar spent a few moments thinking in Rivenese.

The rest of the room was even worse.

Achenar spent ages reading over Esher's notes. The man had clearly had extensive instruction in dissection even if he had skipped lessons on the immorality of vivisection or merely not been informed of it yet before the Fall.

Guild cadets and immature guildsmen, thinking they knew everything and leaving havoc in their wake, all so they could be ready to become guild masters as soon as possible on maturity instead of on wisdom. Guild masters in guilds that were no longer there, even.

He had focused on brains and shoulders, at least on the research he had considered important enough to keep posted on his thinking wall. Brains made sense, as the control of native Linking had to be somewhere in the mind because there was nowhere else for it, but shoulders?

Did the tattoo-like mark on that one faded almost pictogram mean anything? It was the only thing Achenar could think of.

Either that or Esher was farther along a descent into situational dementia than Achenar thought. And Achenar knew what situational dementia felt like and the signs it left behind.

Esher was not showing the signs.

So why _shoulders_ in such detail? Why range of motion, why the underlying musculature?

Why had Esher studied their shoulders as it his life depended on knowing everything about them?

_He didn't have a Linking Book back,_ Achenar realized. _The zoologists had the Book, but it was unused. The Link back was gone. A'geris missed him, but he couldn't come back on his own and the Others wouldn't take him anywhere. He'd offended them too badly from the start. He had to find out how they did it and 'steal the fire' as Grandmother would have put it when I was a kid._

And that's when Achenar saw the unassuming chair.

It was simple, nothing to pay much attention to. Just a simple low backless seat.

A simple low backless seat with an arching rod coming out of the back with hooks on it.

The kind of specialized equipment Yeesha might not have identified as what it was, even given so much rich context to work with.

Atrus certainly wouldn't recognize it. He didn't have the viciousness of heart it would take to think of the use for the thing.

And Sirrus might have used one if he had been provided the opportunity without having Achenar there to do his work for him.

Achenar, however, had once been among the few nasty souls in history to independently dream one up and use the damned -- literally -- contraption.

It wouldn't work on a human. But it would work on anything that hadn't made the shift to fine-haired body-baldness.

Anything that hadn't become so thin-skinned.

Thin-skinned as in the quality of having skin on one's body liable to ripping under low stress in the absence of any previous damage.

It was a makeshift flaying rig, and somewhere on it there would be restraints to ensure the occupant's struggles pulled in the intended direction. And they wouldn't be where Achenar had installed them on any of his because the Others had such a unique posture compared to primates...

Achenar felt sick.

It was too close to thinking as he once had, and he hated it. He could almost see how the Other who had taught him the gesture for 'friendship' would fit right there, screaming and trying to get away from Esher's blade...

Achenar couldn't take it anymore. He climbed and took deep breaths as soon as he was in the open air.

He had been right to not fully trust Esher. So horrifyingly right.

The worst part, at least at the moment, was knowing he had no choice about going back in the lab.

A flaying rig like that was only good for partial skinning of a being that was still alive and significantly mobile. There was no purpose to it otherwise.

When Achenar used one, it was specifically for the torture it caused. Esher didn't have that as a motive and he was maintaining at least a veneer of being a serious researcher. The pain was a side-effect -- he'd been after skin removed from something that was alive and conscious.

Someone who was alive and conscious.

The rig would be customized to exactly what he wanted to flay off his victim, and there wouldn't be any way to be sure what that was until Achenar had another look at the rig, but he knew they were most useful for places normal restraints made awkward -- back, shoulders, and neck.

Shoulders.

The thinking board made sudden sick sense. Esher had been doing studies of his target site before he built the rig and strapped someone into it. The veneer of scientific respectability would have demanded it.

Achenar's blood ran even colder, if it was possible.

Esher touched his shoulder when he Linked. Every time he Linked. He'd had to steal a way off of Noloben. Whatever that tattoo or whatever on that one drawing _was_, it was important.

However he'd done it and however it worked, it looked like Esher had literally excised the ability to Link off of one of the Others, then found a way to preserve it for his own use.

Linking was a gift of the Maker. Esher of D'ni was a thief, a thief of the highest possible order. And a torturer, and a murderer to have gotten some of those sketches.

Achenar stood in the warm sea breeze and tried to convince himself the wind was cleansing.

When he got off Noloben, he was finding a way to wash. Even if all he had was the reflecting pools on Direbo.

Reflecting.

He'd gotten in here because the reflection in the pots on the beach held the secret of the combination to enter.

And he'd managed that by learning how to ask the Others to make it rain.

He had all the fresh water he could want, he only need ask for it politely. And if they were anything like every other species descended from protomammals Achenar had ever met, the Others would understand the instinct to groom off bad feelings.

Everyone else did it, why not them?

He'd go back through the lab first, though. There was a pedestal up here as well as some lens device he'd look at later, he could handle everything with the slate afterward up here and Link back down instead of walking back down through the lab _again_.

He went back down and inspected the flaying rig.

Sure enough, there were the expected bindings. Achenar couldn't make sense of the configuration for a moment until it came to him and the bars on top of the cage made perfect sense.

Wings! Wings folded so no one could harm them, wings folded close against the back and sides like a bird's. Achenar hadn't considered the possibility because he was familiar with human ecologies where four-limb body design was the only standard for land vertebrates.

The Others had six limbs. Achenar had a feeling he knew how many fins he would find if he went fishing in the oceans here. It really was a very different Age.

The bindings showed their legs could straighten fully, they just didn't use that as a resting or walking posture. They were constantly ready to take to the air. But they didn't, they just darted away like sparrows and finally Linked away.

They Linked away, when sparrows would have flown.

_That's_ why they didn't follow the rules of the Art -- they weren't natively Linking, they were Flying around the Tree Of Possibilities.

The Maker had no doubt given them rules, simply different ones because the restrictions needed were different.

Esher didn't have the brain of a flier. He wouldn't be interested in learning to compensate for not having one. He would be up against the limits of the Art because he couldn't break from them in his own mind.

The Others had the wider-set eyes of things that flew to escape from predators. They'd have the brain capacity to watch many things at once -- or more importantly, to Watch many things at once.

Esher didn't. He was only Watching a few places he'd been to see when Achenar got there. Anywhere else, he wouldn't see what Achenar was doing but the Others would probably know all about it.

He smiled in grim satisfaction at all that meant put together and didn't quite like the way it felt. As if he were falling backward the longer he stayed here, the more he reacclimated to an environment he would have once been so comfortable in.

He hadn't used a flaying rig since he'd publicly executed Light-Through-New-Leaves on Channelwood not all that long before Linking to Haven. He didn't know whether to push the memory away in repulsion or cling to it as a reminder of why he could never go down that mental path again.

But he had a way to deceive Esher now, _and_ have the Others know he was not showing his true thoughts when he did it.

He tore himself away, knowing he found everything he could at the flaying rig. There wasn't much else to find there in the lab, but he wandered around one last time to be sure. Nothing about the Tablet, nothing about the Quest.

Nothing about how they were bound, nothing about how to release them from it. No surprise there. Esher didn't want the Others unbound, he wanted them bound to him.

He wanted the glory days of D'ni back. And no price was too high for him to make anyone else pay, Achenar suspected.

Achenar climbed back on top and looked around. He'd been everywhere on the island, there had to be somewhere else he needed to go.

There. The facing island on the far side from where he'd started. He'd had to Link somewhere else on Tahgira and Todelmer, why would Noloben be any different so far as the mechanics of the Quest went?

He'd just have to find where the pedestal over there was, write the symbol, not throttle Esher with the Maker's help, and then be gone from this Age and be one stage closer to doing whatever he needed to do.

Only there was no pedestal.

That was when he noticed the sandbar connecting the two islands. With deep water on either side.

He was on the Age that produced a people who were skittish fliers and who had no visible predators to have needed that sort of defense from.

Achenar had never waded through any water large enough to hide a predator since the day the big male cerpatee had nearly _eaten_ him up in one bite.

He was sure there was no actual danger. Esher would have said something. Yeesha would have gotten hurt.

But it was at least as rational as the Others avoiding even a drawing of a snake.

He'd only built the lakehouse because he knew the lake was closed water clear enough to be sure nothing larger than his dinner plate was down there.

He'd only trusted the water in Tomahna because it was functionally closed from the spring to the seep.

This water could hold a cerpatee. Easily. And not only did he not have a weapon capable of defending himself from a predator, he knew he didn't dare make one. Not here. Not even if he were sure there was no chance it might make him fail the Quest. He was a guest here. Guests shouldn't carry weapons unless their hosts warned them to, and here there were no warnings.

He looked through the lens, wondering if there was some hint of how to get over there without the anxiety shakes of maybe being eaten before his own next meal.

The door opened.

Not the problem that needed immediate solving, but he'd take it. He stepped away to see if anything else had changed.

The door closed.

That was when Achenar saw the button in the floor of the rooftop platform.

One quick test later and he knew the slate alone wasn't heavy enough.

Which meant he needed to get one of the Others to stand there while he ran across the sandbar.

And he knew leaving the slate with anything other than a location on it got them to come back a second time later to retrieve it.

Achenar tested the theory once, scrubbing at his hair in the rain as he stared from one beach to the other to be sure the timing was right, and then he ran across the sandbar in safety, the rain the Other called helping to mask the splashes from his footsteps.

No predators came at him from the deep water.

He gave thanks to the Maker as he slipped inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rig as described may not actually be in the Age. On a recent run, I couldn't see what I thought I'd seen and it's possible I just misinterpreted part of the cage supports.
> 
> But Esher's that far down the slippery slope and so was Achenar, so I'm not editing that out.


	10. Chapter 10

There was a bit more maneuvering before he could get the slate into the Keep, but of course Esher showed up once he had.

Esher seemed to have finally figured out Achenar didn't trust him very much. The only surprise there was that it had taken so long.

And then Esher laid out his plan.

The Myst Book.

Esher wanted to hide the Tablet on Myst, where Yeesha would never return. Or at least that was what he wanted Achenar to believe. It was probably more the fact Yeesha couldn't rescue anyone from him there. _And_ the fact Esher didn't need to have a Linking Book out to come and go as he pleased.

"Do not let your feelings of doubt, perhaps even of me, cloud your reason." And then he left.

_Oh, my reason is as clear as the reflecting pool in the Temple Of Yahvo on Releeshahn,_ he thought at the empty air.

Well, he didn't have to worry about being seduced into Esher's plan. There was only one person less likely to go to Myst than Yeesha, and he was that person.

And going to an Age to discover no assurance there would ever be a way off was the sort of thing you only did _once_ in your entire lifetime -- either it was the last time you ever Linked or you _learned_.

Achenar had _learned_ that lesson the hardest way possible. That many years alone was enough to keep him from risking it, even if it hadn't been Myst.

He knew Esher wouldn't contact him again on Noloben.

He had a little time to think. That and the longer between his foray through the lab and the next time he slept, the better.

Something was adding up wrong.

Someone had bound the others to the Tablet. But D'ni had the Book to Noloben stashed somewhere Esher could find it -- and if he had been a cadet or guildsman at the time he'd have probably stayed close to the guildhouse so it _was_ the zoologists who had it. And they'd had it where a young man running in fear could find it, which meant it was not locked up and not on a high shelf.

It also meant the Others had either not perceived Esher as the young man he had been or they had been predisposed to not have much patience with humans.

The Tablet was unclaimed now, but who had held it last? Everything in D'ni was salvage since the Fall and no one had been concerned the owner of the Tablet could follow a Linking Book carried in by the wise but inquisitive.

Which meant someone of D'ni origin had been in the technical owner. Regardless of Ri’neref's laws -- or using profound abuse of legal classifications.

Whether they were used or simply kept restricted, Achenar didn't know yet. But he was an eighth D'ni, and that meant it wasn't his to ignore.

There was also the matter of Esher presuming any hesitance on Achenar's part was due to manipulation from Yeesha. As if his excuse of scientific inquiry would actually make what happened in his lab any more morally acceptable.

Which said something deeply troubling about the state of the Guild Of Zoologists at the time of the Fall. Worse than what Ti'ana's memories had said about the state of the Guild Of Linguists.

Far, far worse.

It meant the guild captains and guild masters he'd had for examples of proper behavior had used 'I needed to learn, it was the only way' as an excuse.

That excuse had obviously been accepted by the guild. All the guilds had their secrets -- the Art, the Ink, the Paper -- so who would go asking questions from outside? As long as they kept the openly egregious behavior punished or hidden well enough the rest of D'ni would never suspect...

Tahgira.

The signs of outside materials.

The ice cave.

Different levels of life imprisonment? Do what the Council and Guild Of Lawmakers understand 'must be done' but get caught in the public eye and get assigned a prison Age that has a minimum level of care... or more.

Another dead guild. He could never ask.

Tahgira might not be as far as it went, only enough to let someone on the Quest figure it out.

_Words_ spoke to a level of constant background corruption and indifference that the Maker was holding all D'ni society to be complicit in.

For the first time in his life, Achenar had to face the possibility that his family and the other survivors were outliers, the exceptional, the ones the Maker had given any choice that might lead to survival.

From a moral view of things, it might be Esher -- and Gehn and Sirrus, for that matter -- who were the true sons of D'ni.

Ri’neref's dream of a world where no one made the choices the Ronay who went to Terahnee were beginning to make might not have long outlived Aileesh his heir.

_Words_ was written during the reign of the kings.

* * *

Achenar was not the least bit unhappy to finally leave Noloben with no reason to return. He had appreciated the chance to learn about the Others on their own ground, but the cost to everyone involved... it wasn't worth it.

He was tired, but he wanted to keep pushing on. The longer between his trip through the laboratory and sleep, the better, he kept reminding himself over and over to stay awake. Each new night he'd been on the Quest had been the worst night he'd ever had, until the next night replaced it.

If it brought some good for the Others, he'd be fine with it all. It'd be good for someone to benefit from the fact the Maker kept him alive this long.

He just hoped that it _could_ do some good.

It took a while to get everything else working the way Aitrus had said it needed to, but he finally had access to another resting chamber, another Book to Direbo, and a growing pile of journals from Yeesha.

He sat on the bed and counted. 11 total.

Three were new.

And Achenar knew now that there would be no more. The door onward into the rest of Descent was blocked somehow to passage from this side. He would travel no further than the Great Shaft.

Probably a good thing -- Esher would wonder why he was prepared for the volcanic gas traps deeper in.

He had dearly hoped he'd prepared her for the solitude but her words told him she had not been.

A live jungle was far different than a dying city no new life could colonize.

"But he was no mirage -- his name was Calam. And he was a D'ni Writer of Ages."

He had to read the page five times before he could fully believe his eyes.

The attempt to gather survivors had missed a Writer. Of all people, a Writer. And of all places -- how many times had his father said they had checked through the Great Library on Ae'gura and found only their own footprints?

Achenar was glad to hear it. People needed people. His own downward spiral before befriending the southern mangrees had proved that to him.

He read further and was amazed.

A master Writer. His little sister had found a master Writer and found in him the intellectual peer no one else left could have been.

Achenar was pleased he'd urged her to wait to leave until she was 25 years old and mature in D'ni eyes. There was no telling what could have happened if she had been young enough for him to think of her as a child. Calam would have been past the Age of Wisdom when they met, or close to it, but an adult was an adult. He could try to be a mentor, but he had to respect her choices as her own once it was certain she was past the Age of Maturity whether he liked it or not.

"But evil will find you, even in the depths of the earth, and Calam was murdered."

Achenar cried out when he read the words.

There had been a guild master left of the Writers who their father would never get to meet. Not being the only one rebuilding the Art from scraps was a dream he'd had since the moment Ti'ana died and Katran put down her pen forever, and it could have been but now it never would be.

Yeesha had lost the first real peer she had ever known, suddenly and violently. And it was clear from how she wrote of him that Calam had become a _peer_ regardless of age and regardless of the differences in education. They'd come to be equals in an intellectual collaboration that lasted years, possibly decades with how long she had been gone, and...

Achenar held in a stream of Rivenese.

Two bracelets. She was wearing two bracelets on one side and balancing them with a piece of leather wrapped too many times around the other.

Their family hadn't kept the D'ni cultural traditions, but other survivors did.

Vahtah wore bracelets like that, one each side. And she'd explained the larger single bracelet her father wore as symbolizing her mother's, given to him when he became her husband. And the ribbon he'd braided on itself and wore on the other wrist was the ribbon that had been bound around their hands during their wedding.

Yeesha's were flipped... because women wore the marriage bracelet on the other side.

Do-it-yourself marriage, like their parents' was? Claiming what could have been because the Maker had written it in her heart? If they hadn't replaced his bracelets with a marriage bracelet scavenged from the city's jewelers, they'd most likely sworn it before Yahvo alone in Calam's dying breaths where the gap in age and life experiences didn't have the time to matter any more than it already did.

Since she'd been through that, they were probably lucky she hadn't cracked hard enough to tattoo her name on her face so she'd remember it whenever she looked into still water!

This wasn't what he'd thought her life might be.

_Words_ said she would have a daughter who would know peace. So she was supposed to find someone else after _that_? And raise a stable child?

Vahtah kept reminding him the ways of the Maker were often incomprehensible, but this... this was cruel. And Achenar was not the sort to use the term lightly.

He reached for the next journal, knowing it had to be about the immediate aftermath.

"In a fit of rage I destroyed the murderer, and I destroyed my innocence."

Achenar closed his eyes and sat very still.

What he would have given all those years ago to never have his little sister Yeesha learn what holding life in your hand and _choosing_ in anger felt like.

"And again I learned that most things cannot be returned to how they were."

Achenar wished they could be, but he'd learned the lesson too.

And then she wrote of her experiences with the Others and clearly noted that they had not rejected her.

So, their initial problems with Esher _had_ been entirely about Esher and his attitude issues toward non-D'ni. That could be useful. It was even reassuring, because it meant they might be legitimately friendly.

Right now, it could be that they were controlled by the Tablet.

It also meant they might treat him well as her kinsman, as long as he didn't give them a reason to reject him.

And then he had to laugh, horrible as it all was.

Yeesha had failed the Quest because of the tendency to think she knew better than everyone else and seek control for their own good, which he had predicted so very long ago when he was still sick from the poison he had breathed to save her life would be her failing if anything was.

She had sought power because she trusted herself with it and power had slipped through her grasp.

Another symbol. It had to mean pain or fear -- it had the mark of the snake as part of it.

He still had to test the symbol he thought might mean singing, but here was no way he was testing this one.

One journal left. He read it. And then he read it again.

He detested puzzles like this. She thought she knew the way, but saying the solution could make it impossible?

"Tarnish the heart, taint the act, soil the innocence."

It was a _century_ too late for that!

The person on the Quest wasn't the pure-of-heart adventurer from one of their great-grandmother's stories, it was him! The one who'd nearly died seeking redemption twice and couldn't even do that right! The one the Maker had warned shouldn't be trusted before the time of the kings was even over! And he was supposed to do whatever she thought was that _easy_ to taint?

So, this was all the help or hindrance he would be getting from his sister. Wonderful.

It truly was, as she said, "some game of the Maker that only he understands."

He ate and laid down to sleep.

It was another 'night' of the horrors he'd made for himself. Again, worse than ever, as if a moment's rest was too much for the Maker to spare him for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bit about bracelets comes from the family life notebooks in Uru. They're religiously symbolic, and handing them over in the wedding ceremony is indicative of exactly the 'looking out for the other's soul' responsibility that has Achenar ruling any possibility of marriage out for himself.


	11. Chapter 11

Direbo. A beach with rocks. Linking.

Esher was waiting for him. Not a good sign -- he was comfortable in this Age.

He called it Laki'ahn and spoke of it the same way Ti'ana had spoken of the legends of a place called Rome and a building called the Coliseum. Only Ti'ana had spoken poorly of it and Esher spoke of this place with pride.

Esher Linked away.

Achenar thought in Rivenese.

It sounded just like Rome. Animals versus people, if he understood Esher correctly, and there was no way Esher would have been so jubilant if those people had been D'ni. Even the lowest class of D'ni.

Ti'ana had said that sometimes, people who followed the Maker the same way she'd been raised to, the way her father and mother had until the days of their deaths, had been killed there for no reason other than that while the crowds cheered.

In a place such as this while men such as Esher cheered. That he was D'ni and they were natives of Earth mattered little, it was all the same darkness of heart.

At least Achenar had never stooped so low as to consider what he had done to be everyday entertainment for the masses.

He had thought that nothing else could make the Age any worse, but then he saw the bones.

_Ah. So at last we know where Gehn stole the phrase that built the wahrks from._

And, quite obviously, the concept of pitting them against the natives of an inhabited Age, although here whoever was up against the beasts seemed to have had a significantly greater chance of survival.

It also meant there was no way Achenar was even going to _think_ about wading across that inlet instead of walking around.

* * *

He found himself sitting forlornly by a dusty windmill while a bird that looked like it had escaped from Jakooth's Age complained at him.

He was going to have to use a canal in that was explicitly meant for something the size and ferocity of a _wahrk_. Granted, he thought it was closed water on the other side as well, but they had clearly been mid-event when the Fall came and who knew what might have survived in the arena?

He knew that worry was foolishness. Nothing that size could survive in closed water that long. There would have been nothing to hunt, even if the sea beasts could live that long in the open ocean.

It didn't make his fears go away.

As if in response to his thoughts, another of the never-ending pattern of solar eclipses swept through. It did not help his mood.

Achenar had a fairly good idea exactly what he needed to do to get into the arena. It was going to be a complete eclipse cycle of wading around and fetching things. If he could get it done that quickly.

He just couldn't bring himself to get started.

_Yeesha's right. It's amazing they can still sing to the Maker. They've been through so much more than this. And they'll go through it again if the wrong sort of person gets his or her hands on that Tablet._

Achenar stared at the canal.

_Sing._

He had a slate symbol he thought was a request to sing. The context Yeesha had surrounded it in suggested they were specifically songs to the Maker. There was little reason for them to have songs about anyone or anything else, if they had been held captive as long as he suspected they had.

It wasn't much, but it might help. It might help just enough to get him moving again.

He got up and used the slate.

He had been right. One of the Others came and sang long enough that the sun was back out before it was over.

Achenar retrieved the slate quickly. He knew if he didn't, he would have to walk all the way around the inlet again after an Other put it away. He hadn't gotten to a second pedestal yet.

It helped. It reminded him that there was a reason he was continuing with the Quest besides knowing Yeesha would probably get him home after he failed. He wanted the Others to have something besides the simple fact of being Made to sing about.

The D'ni had given them enough reasons not to.

The D'ni. They were familiar with the D'ni.

There was no reason he couldn't repeat the symbol. He'd just have to keep picking the slate up fast enough.

And he didn't dare to say anything to them. Esher could be Watching. If Esher had any idea who Achenar was or that he sympathized with 'the beast creatures' then there could be problems.

Twenty-five times would have been symbolic but it would have also been abusive to them.

Five times, however, would only be another four. That wouldn't be too much to ask for, and they would probably catch the meaningfulness of the number.

Then he felt like slapping himself.

He'd seen their number system. Five was significant for them as well.

Five was a common ground. The sort of common ground Achenar needed to signal to them.

He requested a song another four times. By the last time, Achenar was ever so slightly humming along. Esher probably wouldn't have noticed that, and even if he did using non-D'ni as sources of entertainment was clearly something Esher was okay with.

Only Achenar wasn't using them as entertainment. He was trying to remind himself that pushing forward through adversity was worth it, that the Maker was looking on through all of this.

He waited through the next eclipse before he got to work. If he could avoid being in the water in the dark, Achenar would prefer that to the alternative of being in wahrk-friendly water with only stars for light.

The symbol on the stone meant exactly what he'd thought it would. Achenar was so blinded by the dust in the air that he failed to retrieve the slate in time. He did manage to get the controls the windmill powered to the right settings before the air could still.

Achenar sat with his shirt covering his face until the dust settled.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow I've apparently had this chapter uploaded but unposted for months, and there really needs to be some sort of You've Got Drafts alert.
> 
> This is as far as I've got formal drafting done as of this time, but I do have the rest plotted out.

It did take more than an eclipse cycle to do everything but Achenar could see it coming and sat on the steps of the arena until it passed before using the pedestals to Link behind bars and continue onward.

After a while, it was easy to get used to the pattern. He wondered how they had handled it in the arena when it was actively in use.

After he had Linked, it was easy to get into the arena. He could finally tell that it was truly closed water and that nothing could have survived this long. There was no current outlet to the sea, in any case.

It was only a matter of time until Esher showed up. The man was far too fond of anything that could remind someone of the power of the D'ni.

Achenar decided he wanted a break first and sat on the first seat in the lower stands, looking at everything he could see.

The stands could seat maybe a few thousand -- an incredible number to Achenar, but nowhere near the entire population at the time of the Fall.

This had not been built to accommodate everyone. Still enough seats to not be reserved for the elite of the elite, which Esher wasn't, so probably just the people rich enough to have children in the guilds or be in the guilds themselves.

Esher had been a cadet. He had clearly come here enough to love the place. Which also meant he had no worthwhile excuses about his marginal involvement in what had happened here -- he was old enough and familiar enough to have noticed things.

Like the fact the gates for those due to fight the sea beasts were shut with no way to open them from down here that Achenar could see.

Not D'ni, then. D'ni would have not accepted that level of risk. If Achenar hadn't been sure before, that alone would have convinced him.

Ri’neref would have considered the very existence of this place to be against D'ni law.

But by the time the D'ni had the spare resources to build an arena like this in an Age, Ri’neref had been long dead and his heirs twisted into something else.

He wondered if the priests had spoken against it, or if the only opposition to what D'ni became had come from prophets like the Watcher who were given no option but to oppose it. The surviving priests he knew would have been against it all he thought, but that was who they were now and not who they had been then.

And there was always the question of how closely the Maker had selected the survivors.

It was rather ingenious how the arena was set up. One way for the beasts to come in, another to haul them out. There were two entrances for men or beings like men, but Achenar couldn't tell if there was any difference between them. All four gates could be closed, trapping everyone and everything in the arena whenever the D'ni at the controls wanted to.

A simple but effective death trap he was currently sitting in. He'd have been worried if he didn't know he had a way out. Besides, he did have two examples of this Quest not being fatal if failed. Yeesha at least would have mentioned it, and Esher seemed too invested in getting the Tablet in his control to risk a willing dupe being killed at this late stage.

There was the matter of getting up into the second level of the arena to figure out.

It looked like simply climbing the stands was an option, but it didn't feel like the right one. There was something he was still missing about this place.

There had to be some justification, something that could be the satisfactory legal cleaned-up reason for this place. Achenar knew all about making those to satisfy your own sense of right and wrong.

Besides simple bloodsport, what had D'ni gotten out of this place? There had to be something.

Achenar already knew it was not the ivory. They'd left it on the dumped corpses, used it in the decor. Some of the D'ni might have used it in art or jewelry, but not on the scale needed for moral cover.

Slaughter like this was also worthless if you wanted the pelt and absolutely unthinkable if you needed it. Besides, if the creatures here resembled wahrks any more closely than Achenar could prove, then the skins would have been worthless anyway.

D'ni lived too far down the food chain to be killing a predator on that level for meat. It took too much effort to hunt something capable of killing you for it to be a worthwhile food source. Even if it was clear the D'ni weren't doing the killing themselves, that only added another layer onto it. Maybe if it was a delicacy, but the D'ni didn't see meat with that kind of value judgment. Or hunting. He'd had to deal with that on Releeshahn, the questions of how reformed he could be if he was still hunting living animals often enough to have fresh meat as his primary protein source.

They wouldn't use bone. Achenar was sure of that. Even Atrus thought bone was primitive.

Achenar still had issues with that idea of not using every bit of an animal you had killed anyway. The life was ended, why not respect it by using anything you could?

There was something else going on.

Wait.

Esher had called the entrance on the beach the trade house. And he'd said the jeweler's door was this side of the building.

The ivory wasn't being used. But something else was.

Achenar looked around. That platform in the center of the stands... The walkway above was even with the jeweler's door.

There had to be some way they were getting whatever it was up there. And he might find more clues there.

There were no clues other than Achenar finding out the slate weighed as much as the smallest unit of weight they cared about here.

He got the slate on the pedestal after he got the lift raised. Another location he could Link to.

Achenar relaxed. No more wading in the arena. The one bright spot he was likely to find in this Age.

He wandered away from the jeweler's door first. He had a feeling Esher was Watching for him over there. Achenar found nothing of note besides the switch for one of the smaller gates.

He'd only gotten up because of a break in the stone wall by the water. Given the way the lift needed one person to stand on it and one person to operate it if it was going to carry a person, no one from the arena was getting into the stands without D'ni permission.

Achenar doubted that permission was ever offered.

He sighed and wiped his brow. At least he was getting closer. At least he was actually tired, so Esher might not think his exasperation was about him even though it actually was. He needed Esher to trust him until he no longer needed a guide in this place.

He walked over, braced inside to deal with Esher again. Hopefully this would be the end of it.

Esher Linked in predictably just in front of the door. If anything, he was more enraptured by his memories.

"What grand sport!"

There was nothing of sport here. This was a death trap.

He spoke of a drive to power in Yeesha that Achenar had never seen a hint of in her ever.

"To have such fellowship with my people again!"

He Linked away, leaving Achenar alone in this place of death and the dead.

He was descended from people who considered this an appropriate kind of 'fellowship'.

Achenar wanted fresh water to bathe in again. Pity he couldn't request rain here.

Achenar walked over to the door and found it to be locked. It was a combination lock with more places than he'd put on the lakehouse bridge on Haven, so he knew immediately that guesswork wouldn't work.

And the Quest wasn't the place for guesswork.

Or for something Grandmother had called 'breaking and entering', even though this was a D'ni Age and technically salvage... except for the chance this was an inhabited Age with abused natives whose descendants should rightfully own all this when they finally explored here, once the abuses became legends.

He wasn't going to break anything he didn't have to. Which meant he needed a combination.

And with his luck, that meant the clue to the combination was on the other side of the building. Which would mean wading back down and Linking out.

He thought a few select words in Rivenese in the Maker's direction. It didn't change anything, but it did make him feel a little better.

And if that was enough to keep him out of the Perfect Age, then everything else he'd ever done was already more than enough and it was already hopeless.

He didn't think it was, though, not between the nightmares and Vahtah's endless hopefulness and stumbling into the Quest. He'd give up the moment the Maker judged and Linked him to Jakooth's Age and not one moment before.

He sighed and started walking down the steps. At least he wouldn't need to do this again after his return journey if he could get both doors open -- and if he was careful, he could simply Link onto the lift again.

It was a pain, he hated it, and the sand was beginning to creep into his boots, but he finally saw the combination through the front window.

Either they had been too trusting or they had only meant it to hold against non-D'ni. Achenar supposed they had meant it to hold against non-D'ni and there was no reason to make sure it was hidden anymore when the people fled and scattered.

If they had just stayed put, if they had been friends with the locals and welcome to stay put, many of them might have lived.

If they had fled back to D'ni cavern, then they had all died. There had only been so much time to get away before the plague was everywhere and unavoidable. And Achenar could see no sign that anyone had tried to stay.

* * *

The trade house was the first preserved  lived-in D'ni space Achenar had ever stepped into. He could see the influence on the architecture of Releeshahn. And the display of the hanging guild colors reminded him of the guild sashes like the one Esher wore and Yeesha had picked up somewhere.

He wondered if her sash had been Calam's or if he had declared her a  member of the guild –- what a scandal that would have been to their ancestors, women had never been allowed in any major guild before the  population crash from the Fall made it a necessity to preserve  all other  remaining  traditions \-- and gone raiding in the city.

The rest of the place turned his stomach.

The red gems lying on the table, barely larger than his closed fist, were what this place was built for? Decorative gems, or one of the other guilds would have been involved. But there was only one guild's colors on the walls.

All the death here was solely for ornamentation, officially. This was their moral excuse. Gemstones.

He felt like punching something. Someone. A guild of someones.

There was even artwork in celebration of the 'sport' that took place here. Achenar knew now for certain that the fighters were native to the Age.

The fighters were depicted bare-chested and even the lowest D'ni in the cavern would refuse to go around without a shirt in public. Matter of their dignity. Achenar had shocked more than a few on Releeshahn with his willingness to shed clothing when it made sense -- and the most he'd taken off  _was_ his shirt.

No, this was clearly an inhabited Age. And judging by a depiction of huge sail-powered ships, they hadn't lived on this island.

That meant there was a harbor Achenar hadn't seen yet. The beach and inlets he had explored couldn't fit something that huge. Maybe the long inlet, if it had been filling with sand all these years, but there had to be another way. He hadn't found a connection to the other arena gates yet.

And he had clearly seen everywhere the D'ni who came here as Esher had long ago ever saw.

Time to see what the men who ran this place kept hidden from the general public.


End file.
